The present invention relates to recording and reproducing apparatus and method using tape-like storage media. Particularly, this invention relates to recording and reproducing apparatus and method with a high-speed accessibility for searching for indexing positions of recorded video or audio, for example.
Tape-like storage media have been used for recording video or audio signals because of large storage capacity but low recording costs compared to disk-like storage media and memories.
Nevertheless, it takes time for tape-like storage media wound around reels to access, for example, indexing positions of recorded video or audio, thus resulting in low accessibility. Increase in tape-feeding speed has little overcome this disadvantage for reproducing apparatus using tape-like storage media, but still not fulfilling high accessibility.
In addition to these apparatus, personal video recorders, or PVR, have been developed for recording digitally compressed video to and reproducing them from storage media such as, hard disk drive, or HDD, with a high-speed random accessibility, instead of tape-like storage media. PVR have a function of instantaneously reproducing any frame of recorded video. However, storage media for PVRs are mostly un-detachable and have a limit to storage capacity due to high costs for large storage capacity. PVR have therefore been used only for time-shift, etc.
Another type of recording equipment has also been proposed. It is a combination of a video tape recorder, or VTR, using tape-like storage media and PVR using HDD for high-speed accessibility. Such equipment with large capacity- and highly-accessible-storage media, such as, HDD, will however be expensive.